Bluegrass players the Slocan Ramblers evolve with their audience

When the Slocan Ramblers were learning their chops at a weekly residency in Toronto’s trendy Kensington Market, they would receive constant reminders that the genre they had become obsessed with was not exactly mainstream.

This is not to say that the four-piece bluegrass band were negatively received. But even the most enthusiastic response would often come with a bit of a disclaimer.

“The common thing people will say is, ‘I didn’t know I liked bluegrass until I saw you guys play,’” says mandolin player Adrian Gross. “Or, the best is: ‘I don’t even like bluegrass, but I like you guys.’ They had never seen it. They never knew that they liked it. They have associations with it that were either incorrect or founded on previous experiences that they had.”

Even in Toronto, arguably the bluegrass capital of Canada, the bar scene was not always the best place for the Ramblers to receive the nuanced appreciation serious bluegrass requires.

But those sorts of comments are less frequent these days. As the Slocan Ramblers criss-cross the country behind their second album, Coffee Creek, the band has graduated from bars to theatres, small halls and folk clubs. Their current tour, for instance, includes a stop Saturday at Calgary’s Nickelodeon Music Club. With difference venues came a different audience for Gross, banjo player Frank Evans, guitarist Darryl Poulsen, and bassist Alastair Whitehead. The Ramblers are playing to fewer people who are surprised they like bluegrass and more aficionados eager to hear it expertly played by a new generation of musicians.

“The band has evolved and the music has evolved,” says Gross. “When we started out we were essentially a bar band. We played every week at this bar and the whole idea was that we would get up and play our favourite bluegrass tunes. We were learning the genre and it was a great opportunity to figure out how to be a bluegrass band. As the band evolved and started to write more, all of a sudden the bar scene didn’t do justice to the type of music we were writing. The music got more intricate. A venue with a better listening audience means we can play better and play more complex music. Knowing we have that audience means we can write in that way as well. It’s really gone hand in hand.”

The maturity of both the writing and playing can be heard on Coffee Creek, an album that mixes supple instrumentals with covers of bluegrass obscurities such as Dave Evans’ Call Me Long Gone with perceptive originals that reflect a deepening understanding and reverence for the genre’s rich history.

While still dismissed in certain circles as simple hillbilly music, bluegrass is a technically demanding style that requires both lightening-fast playing and precision.

Gross grew up in Montreal and moved to Toronto to attend Humber College’s four-year music program. He played jazz, blues, folk and rock music on guitar before becoming infatuated with bluegrass and picking up the mandolin. To play the genre well requires a dedication that borders on obsession, something the four Ramblers all share.

“It’s kind of an infectious style,” Gross says. “If you get into it, it’s kind of like catching a bug. For me, I heard a few bands that played it really, really well. I love musicians playing really well and playing really great music. I can remember hearing the Buena Vista Social Club record and getting into Cuban jazz and realizing there was this whole world of really virtuoso, amazing jazz players and people that I was never aware of. That kind of thing excites me, finding a new part of the world or style where there are musicians playing just as well as classical musicians but in a style you’ve never been aware of. When I first heard bluegrass, I had that moment. It was like ‘Wow, these people are as good as anybody.’”

Still, this doesn’t mean the Slocan Ramblers are an overly academic band. Yes, they may attract bluegrass fans who are more attentive than the soused bar patrons of Kensington Market. But even when playing soft-seat theatres or folk clubs, the band still manages to generate the onstage heat that once helped win over cynical Torontonians.

“It’s really soulful, intricate, complex and involved music but of course it can also just be a rowdy fun thing at the bar,” Gross says. “It’s great when it serves both purposes. We paid our dues for a long time doing the rowdy bar thing and that definitely carries us to how we play now. We play a really high-energy show and we try to keep some rowdy element in it and keep it really fun. The idea isn’t to put on your button-up tie and make it not fun, the idea was to keep all the elements we loved about it, which is to make it rowdy, fun, really visceral and really immediate, but play in venues where everyone can hear what you’re doing.”

The Slocan Ramblers will play the Nickelodeon Music Club on Saturday with the North Beauties. The show starts at 7:30 p.m. Visit thenick.ca.

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